1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a motion detecting apparatus and method which is capable of correctly detecting a moving object by determining a motion variation on a pixel basis through comparison between frames.
2. Description of the Related Art
With active introduction of monitoring systems into a wide range of applications, techniques for improving performance of the monitoring systems have been consistently developed.
Main concerns on evaluation of such monitoring system performance involve accuracy of object detection. Above all, it is important to correctly detect an object even under noise and illumination conditions which occur under the influence of environments in which the monitoring system is installed.
Most of existing motion detection algorithms for object detection involve detecting an object by separating portions corresponding to a foreground and a background from an image.
To this end, the existing motion detection algorithms extract an object from a differential image between a current frame and an established frame. However, these algorithms have limitation in correct detection of an object which is consistently moving.
In other words, if motion of an object in the established frame is insignificant in the current frame in a certain direction, a differential image is obtained with loss of a region where objects overlap with each other in the current frame and the established frame. Accordingly, the objects are detected with an area smaller than an actual object area, which may result in poor accuracy.
Furthermore, according to the existing motion detection algorithms, depending on the monitoring environments, noises occur frequently, such as detecting typical background motion, such as varying shadow and shaking tree branches, as a foreground, which may result in poor accuracy of object detection under low illumination circumferences.